This is the story of the greatest financial crisis we will ever see... The one that is on the way. Filmmaker Martin Borgs takes a provocative look at the events leading up the Global Financial Crisis and asks if the attempts to avoid a ruinous collapse of banks and other major finance houses may set the world on the path to an even bigger meltdown

"Twenty countries (including America) are headed into bankruptcy and more will follow. That brings up the subject of state debt in the US. America has been in an inflationary depression for 18 months. States have been cutting back for two years," but still face huge budget gaps required to be closed....2011 will be a terrible year (with) 80% of states expect(ing) deficits of more than $200 billion. 2012 looks even worse." Most worrisome, "there is no recovery and there never has been....the US economy and financial system is comatose." The worst is yet to come and will hit hard on arrival

Sacred Economics offers a fundamental analysis of what has gone wrong with money; it describes a more beautiful world based on a different kind of money and economy; it explains the collective actions necessary to create that world and the means by which these actions can come about; and it explores the personal dimensions of the world-transformation, the change in identity and being that I call "living in the Gift."

The threats to the U.S. economy are extreme. Yet, neither the Obama administration, the Republican opposition, economists, Wall Street, nor the media show any awareness. Instead, the public is provided with spin about recovery and with higher spending on pointless wars that are hastening America’s economic and financial ruin

Looking ahead in 2010, the state of the nation for most people is dire and worsening, and 2011 looks no better. City mayors are on the front lines dealing with it. So are governors at their state levels, but increasingly they're getting less help from Washington from an administration with priorities leaving them out and the millions they serve, on their own and out of luck

First Iceland, then Ireland, now Greece. Much of Europe is mired in inescapable debt and bankrupt nations, the result of crashing banks, bank bailouts, and soaring unemployment. The U.S. and U.K. watch from a distance, knowing their turn is next

According to US constitution only the Congress has the authority to create money. But a private bank, the Federal Reserve is printing money in direct violation to the US constitution and goes on bankrupting America, taking the whole world with it

Dubai’s announcement on Wednesday that it would be delaying by “at least” six months the maturity date of $59 billion in bonds issued by the city-state’s largest state-owned company, Dubai World, has sent global shares tumbling. The market reaction to Dubai’s massive debt default is partly explained by the exposure of European and Asian banks to DP World and its tourism subsidiary, Nakheel

Numerous failures by industrialised countries’ governments and central banks in managing the financial crisis are feeding the next bubble, which most likely will again provoke economic woes such as recession, unemployment, and poverty, according to economists and analysts

The key is monetary reform, whether at the local or national levels. People have lost control of their ability to earn a living. But change could be accomplished through sovereign control by people and nations of the monetary means of exchange

When will the price effects of hyper-inflation begin to kick in? How will the government respond to it? What will be the social and political fallout? What can ordinary people do to protect themselves from monetary and legislative abuses? These are the questions that beg for answers

Economic violence is not only the violence caused for economic reasons, but also the violence caused by spurious economics. It is the violence caused to people when they lose their jobs and livelihoods, when they witness massively divergent rewards for work, when they see an endless perpetuation of inequality around them. Such involuntary unemployment in the long run leads to social breakdown and community fragmentation. This is already ongoing, but it must not be exacerbated

Real solutions to the contradictions of capitalism lie not in Keynesian economics but in a revolt from below of the population, which holds out the potential for a change in the rules of the game. Joan Robinson said somewhere that a political movement strong enough to reform capitalism would also be strong enough to introduce socialism. Therein lies our hope and their fear

If incompetence in Washington, the type of incompetence that produced the current economic crisis, destroys the dollar as reserve currency, the “unipower” will overnight become a third world country, unable to pay for its imports or to sustain its standard of living

Stories about the economic woes facing individual cities and towns are already a staple of national newspapers, even as the bad news, experts believe, is only beginning to flow in. Spikes in unemployment already reaching double-digit levels in some cases, municipal governments deep in the red, essential cutbacks in local services, increasing lines at food pantries, towns facing bankruptcy or even contemplating municipal suicide are increasingly common nationwide

Today's crisis should bury the myth about "free-market" fundamentalism as the best of all possible worlds. History proves otherwise by clearly showing that it fails the many to advantage the few because it's arranged that way

In a clear indication the economic crisis is rapidly heading into a severe global depression, US employers purged 598,000 jobs in January, the most job losses in a single month since 1974. January's firings raised the unemployment rate to 7.6 percent, the highest level since 1992

More grim figures released by the US Commerce Department yesterday provide further confirmation of the severity of the economic contraction in the US and globally. The US economy shrank at an annualised rate of 3.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008—its worst result since 1982. The decline followed a contraction of 0.5 percent in the third quarter—the first successive quarterly GDP declines since 1990-91

What we are now seeing is the beginning of an inevitable downward adjustment in American living standards to conform with our actual place in the world. We are headed to a recovery that will not feel like a recovery at all. Eventually, productive capacity will be restored, as lowered US wages make it again profitable for some things to be made here at home again, but like people in the 1930s looking back at the Roaring 20s of yore, we are going to look back at the last two decades as some kind of dream

The body count is still rising. For months on end, marked by bankruptcies, foreclosures, evictions, and layoffs, the economic meltdown has taken a heavy toll on Americans. In response, a range of extreme acts including suicide, self-inflicted injury, murder, and arson have hit the local news. By October 2008, an analysis of press reports nationwide indicated that an epidemic of tragedies spurred by the financial crisis had already spread from Pasadena, California, to Taunton, Massachusetts, from Roseville, Minnesota, to Ocala, Florida

What needed is the destruction
of current system, a revolution, not within the boundaries of one or
few nation-states, but a global revolution, not just to uproot this
system but to uproot the attitudes and fixation towards knowledge, ideas
and initiatives

We can envisage a truly parallel
system of business -- one that deliberately competes with the existing
system, growing daily from the inside out, even as the "shell"
of the old system crumbles all around us. As Mahatma Ghandi and others
have suggested, let's "build a new society in the shell of the
old"

While progressives were engaged
in full-scale war against neoliberalism, reformist thinking was percolating
in critical establishment circles. This thinking is now about to become
policy, and progressives must work double time to engage it

In a new article, economics professor
Richard Wolff explains the current crisis in Marxian terms. It "emerged
from the workings of the capitalist class structure. Capitalism's history
displays repeated boom-bust cycles punctuated by bubbles. They range
unpredictably from local, shallow and short to global, deep and long." Clearly we're now in one of the latter and potentially the worst ever

The economic mess that has been
unfolding the last few months is not, as the right fear and the left
hope, an organic collapse of the global capitalist system But rather
it is, as so many so-called financial crises before it, a scam perpetrated
by what Lincoln used to call the "money power." The goals
are to capture other lucrative businesses, reduce government and its
ability to constrain its hegemony over capital, and to reduce union
membership by creating such dire economic circumstances as to make unions
powerless to save their members from hardship

By
most accounts the US economy is in serious trouble. Robert Reich, an
adviser to President-elect Obama, calls it a "mini-depression,"
and that designation might be optimistic. The Russian economist, Mikhail
Khazin says that the "U.S. will soon face a second ‘Great
Depression.’" It is possible that even Khazin is optimistic

Can the worst of all possible outcomes
be avoided? It's beyond this writer's ability to imagine. It's for the
Fed, Treasury, GSEs (government sponsored enterprises like Fannie, Freddie,
Sallie, Ginnie, etc.) and banks, if they're able and willing, to try.
To create money, get it flowing, inflate or die, but it already may
be too late. Things that can't go on forever, won't, and as writer Ellen
Brown observes: "The parasite has run out of its food source." The engine is now out of fuel

These are strange times indeed,
when the high priests of the day, the economists, are eager to quote
prophetic poets like WB Yeats (The Second Coming), fearing an apocalypse,
which has already happened a few times in the recent history of “modern” civilization. But they fear, perhaps rightly, that what may arrive may
be something unimaginably worse than all catastrophes seen hitherto

Amidst the cacophony of the present
crisis and confusion, the revolutionary Marxists need to step up and
clarify the essential nature of the current economic crisis, as well
as the further economic and political crises that are on the way. The
ruling classes are struggling to retain their political as well as their
economic hegemony, both of which are being threatened in every field.
We should not let this opportunity pass

The current credit crisis is not
primarily due to failing single family home mortgages, although mortgage
debt is part of it. It is the coming due of capital debts that resemble
Russian nested dolls, each one opening up to reveal yet more debt. These
are the now-famous 'toxic assets', the 'collateralized debt obligations'
and 'jumbo covered bonds' which promised to pay the holder based on
the interest that would be collected on yet other debt instruments

The economic freedom promised through
the liberalisation of market forces has, in reality, resulted in a freedom
for the very few and a contradiction of the promise that increased wealth
will be shared - demanding a reframing of the concepts of 'democracy'
and 'human rights', says Adam W. Parsons

America's salad days are over,
Peter Schiff writes in his 2007 book "Crash Proof: How to Profit
from the Coming Economic Collapse." We've gone from a nation of
savers, investors and producers to one of borrowers, consumers and gamblers.
Official government statistics lie. They conceal hidden truths. America's
house of cards is crumbling. It won't be pretty when it collapses. His
advice is get out of the dollar. Get your money out of the country while
you can, and gold is one of his recommendations

Dealing with today's crisis requires
big international rescue according to economist Nouriel Roubini. Called
Dr. Doom for his gloomy views that today command worldwide respect.
And whatever's done, America faces "year(s) of economic stagnation." After a deep protracted downturn. If as true as he forecasts, it signals
the end of prosperity. A new age of austerity and world economies in
extreme disrepair and needing an alternative model in lieu of a clearly
failed one. Hugely corrupted as well

What explains the paradox of the
dollar’s sharp rise in value against other currencies (except
the Japanese yen) despite disproportionate US exposure to the worst
financial crisis since the Great Depression? Read on, here is the answer

Nouriel Roubini, the Wall Street
economist who has gathered world fame by predicting the current world
financial crisis, has already warned that the US economy may end up
as a 'war economy', just as happened during the 20th century world wars.
Clearly, it is time economists catch up, and engage in debate on the
military underpinnings of economic policymaking in the US and beyond

It is possible to get out of this
recession without allowing it to become a depression if enough people
press for decisive action along these lines. Eventually, another crisis
will come along, of course: that is the nature of capitalism. But we
can deal with that problem when we get to it!

The financial crisis has brought
to a head the underlying contradictions which have been wracking the
capitalist system over an entire period. Notwithstanding the desperate
hopes of policy makers in Europe, Asia, and other regions, a severe
and protracted recession in the US will inevitably trigger a major downturn
in the world economy

Writers on financial or economic
matters rarely see the need to explain the basics of the field or justify
them at the best of times, let alone in the middle of unfolding crises.
What are these “financial instruments” — futures,
options, and swaps? What are they for, and how did they increase the
dangers of what occurred? What is the relationship between finance and
the ‘real economy’? What exactly is wrong with that relationship?
Events move so quickly that stories discussing them rarely stop to explain
the basics

The authorities have blamed subprime
mortgages for the crisis. Why then does their solution fail to address
the problem of the mortgages? Instead, the solution directs public money
into an increasingly concentrated private financial sector, the management
of which is not only vastly overpaid, but also has escaped accountability
for the financial chicanery that, allegedly, threatens systemic financial
meltdown unless bailed out by the taxpayers

Ordinary people are hit hardest.
Millions will suffer grievously for years as a result of this totally
avoidable crisis. Fraudsters who caused it are rewarded. Innocent homeowners,
households, and workers are punished. Mercilessly

Shocks throughout the world financial
system, centered in the financial meltdown in the US, led by mid-September
to a sharp fall on the Russian stock markets. The country is facing
its greatest banking crisis since the default of August 1998, demonstrating
the enormous vulnerability of the Russian economy to fluctuations on
the world markets

The US House rejected Treasury
Secretary Paulson's $700 billion Emergency Economic Stabilization Act
of 2008 . Paulson said he has the votes, but Paulson was wrong. The
House bucked the Paulson's claim that buying up the illiquid mortgage-backed
assets from the nation's banks would be enough to save the financial
system from an impending meltdown

The type of facile analysis that
focuses on 'it's all over' – whether in terms of the end of neoliberalism,
the decline of the American empire, or even the next great crisis of
capitalism – is not much use here insofar as it is offered without
any clear socialist strategic implications. It ain't over till it's
made over

The Treasury and Congress have
inadvertently revealed that federal financing is readily available to
rebuild the US economy, guarantee decent living wages and provide health
care for everyone if we choose elective officials who are committed
to the needs of the US workers and not the Wall Street billionaires

The crime of the century. The greatest
one ever. Author Danny Schechter calls it "Plunder." The title
of his important new book on the subprime and overall financial crisis.
Economist Michael Hudson and others refer to a kleptocracy. A Ponzi
scheme writ large. Maybe an out-of-control Andromeda Strain. An economic
one. Deadly. Unrecallable. Science fiction now real life. Potentially
catastrophic. World governments trying to contain it. Trying everything
but not sure what can work. Maybe only able to paper it over for short-term
relief. Buy time but in the end vindicate the maxim that things that
can't go on forever, won't

U.S. lawmakers and the George
W. Bush administration are continuing their closed-door meetings through
the weekend to try and fashion a softer 700-billion-dollar deal for
Wall Street that will appeal to citizens angry at the prospect of the
mega-corporate bailout

The administration is once again
holding a gun at our head, saying, "My way or the highway." We have been bamboozled before by this tactic. We should not let it
happen to us again.There are alternatives

The Bush-Cheney-Haliburton administration
proposes to hand over to Wall Street over twenty-five hundred dollars
for each person over the age of 14 in the U.S. That’s over $10,000
for a family of four where the children are teen-agers. Do you know
many families of four, with two teens, who can cough up $10,000 to help
bail out Wall Street?

Secretary Paulson’s plan
to prevent collapse of the financial system prompts immediate and unanswered
questions: Will the Paulson plan fulfill its intentions or will it worsen
what it wants to correct? The health of the financial system is a major
problem, but is it the problem, and does it disguise the true problem?

The events of the last ten days
on Wall Street represent a new and more destabilizing phase of the turmoil
gripping financial institutions and markets in the U.S. A financial
crisis has been unfolding for more than a year. It is now the most serious
financial crisis of U.S. capitalism since the Great Depression of the
1930s. And it is by no means contained or under control

As the bailout of Wall Street is
debated in the U.S. Congress, and world political leaders and global
financial analysts, are all excited about what will ultimately save
us from a economic Pearl Harbor, will prevent a financial Tsunami, or
the repeat of the Great Depression, I am surprised that no CEO has yet
been arrested. I am amazed and perplexed; obviously the question has
not been framed properly

This is what we might call the
$1trillion question. That's $1,000,000,000,000, by the way. It is a
little like surgery. The US government has amputated the gangrenous
leg of the banking system to save the patient. But it is now preparing
to graft the infected limb on to the body politic of America. The US
taxpayers will be lucky if they do not feel distinctly unwell as a result
of this little experiment

Why the extraordinary bailout measures
for Fannie, Freddie and AIG? The answer may have less to do with saving
the insurance business, the housing market, or the Chinese investors
clamoring for a bailout than with the greatest Ponzi scheme in history,
one that is holding up the entire private global banking system. What
had to be saved at all costs was not housing or the dollar but the financial
derivatives industry; and the precipice from which it had to be saved
was an "event of default" that could have collapsed a quadrillion
dollar derivatives bubble, a collapse that could take the entire global
banking system down with it

In the midst of the market frenzy,
increasingly reminiscent of the 1929 crash that ushered in the Great
Depression, more icons of American capitalism were set to topple, with
investment bank Morgan Stanley and savings and loan giant Washington
Mutual desperately seeking to avoid collapse by finding other banks
willing to buy them

I pray to God that Americans now
find the courage to stand up against the lies, distortions and censorship.
I pray to God that Indians now find the courage to stand up against
a mindless mimicking of a failed and exploitative economic and political
system

You know things are bad when Yahoo.com,
the most trafficked website in the world and usually a purveyor of mindless
celebrity gossip, cooking tips and dating advice, features a top story
about how Americans could lose their bank deposits following the collapse
of Lehman Brothers

The EU may find itself torn between
those within its imperialist ruling classes calling for a more robust
European military capacity and those that still want to rely on the
NATO alliance. The pathways towards a greater or lesser EU international
geopolitical role would be profoundly influenced by a major move by
China to wrench more initiative in the world economy and/or to forge
closer alliance with Russia

Are we seeing the totalitarian
dictatorship of the world’s financial elite being rolled out,
with petroleum and food prices the primary weapon of a final coup d’etát
against every national government on earth and their citizens? And if
we knew who these “high-end investors” were, and who controlled
them, wouldn’t we then understand who is in charge of the New
World Order and for whom it really functions?

This is a research essay about
changes in global capitalist accumulation, newly emerging relations
of strength among imperialist and regional powers, and the force of
competitive pressures and tensions. It is about great-power rivalries
in a world system based on exploitation. To use an analogy to the complex
motions of large parts of the Earth’s crust and upper mantle,
this is a discussion of shifting tectonic plates in the world economy:
some of their longer-term movements and some of the more sudden and
unexpected eruptions

Direst forecasts have it in its
early innings with the worst of things ahead. Only in the fullness of
time will we know, but some things are clear. None of this happened
by chance. Nor should it have in the first place. A combination of financial
malpractice, outright fraud, and greed are to blame. The same mistakes
keep getting repeated. The costs keep going higher. Sooner or later
they matter, and some day it'll be too late to fix them. Some day may
be closer than smart money folks think. Stay tuned, be cautious, and
ignore Fed Chairmen and politicians promising miracles

GE’s results shook the financial
markets because they indicated that the impact of the housing and credit
crisis was spreading beyond the housing and banking sectors to broader
parts of the US economy. GE’s report came at the beginning of
the first-quarter earnings report season, and seemed to confirm the
worst fears on Wall Street that profits will drop sharply nearly across
the board

The world we wanted to have is
not within our reach; the world we deeply dread is upon us. Meanwhile,
the world we have known, ugly as it may be but nevertheless familiar,
is vanishing before our eyes. Herein lies an opportunity to experience
deeper layers of who we really are and what we are really made of. Collapse
is compelling us to confront these issues, whether we want to or feel
ready to do so or not. While I do not welcome the suffering this will
entail, I do welcome the transformation of human consciousness and thus
the evolutionary quantum leap it may offer us

Light export industries in China
are continuing to face massive losses, shedding jobs and moving operations
either abroad or to lower-wage regions of China. The immediate triggers
of the downturn—the political and commercial consequences of the
US financial crisis—are exacerbating working class discontent
over low wages, pollution and poor working conditions

The
new interest rate cuts can only exacerbate the decline in the dollar,
which has already fallen to record or near-record lows against the euro,
the yen and other currencies. There are already signs that the dollar’s
plunge is having serious effects on the financing of US trade

Just two days after the Federal
Reserve Board announced an emergency $200 billion debt-relief plan for
distressed Wall Street finance houses, markets in the US and internationally
were shaken by the collapse of Carlyle Capital Corporation (CCC), a
publicly traded investment fund established by the Carlyle Group private
equity fund.The Carlyle debacle was accompanied by other developments
pointing to both recession and rising inflation. Crude oil prices hit
a new record of $111, gold futures breached the $1,000-an-ounce mark,
and the dollar fell to record lows versus the Japanese yen, the euro
and the Swiss franc

While the price of oil climbs above
$110 a barrel, most Americans dread the day they will have to pay $4.
On this tropical island and a few stations in California, $4 gas has
already arrived, straining the pocketbooks of residents and businesses

I remember the time when General
Motors Corp. was considered a pillar of the American dream, a fundamental
of the economic miracle. Now, after reporting a quarterly loss of $722
million, compared with a profit of $950 million a year earlier, and
offering buyouts to all of its 74,000 United Auto Workers employees,
GM is clearly not a part of the sound fundamentals which President Bush
likes to describe

If the US government cannot balance
its budget by cutting its spending or by raising taxes, the day when
it can no longer borrow will see the government paying its bills by
printing money like a third world banana republic. Inflation and more
exchange rate depreciation will be the order of the day

America's economy is headed for
a major slowdown. Whether there is a recession (two quarters of negative
growth) is less important than the fact that the economy will operate
well below its potential, and unemployment will grow. The country needs
a stimulus, but anything we do will add to our soaring deficit, so it
is important to get as much bang for the buck as possible

In regards to our ‘global
economy’, one is better off reading Dostoevsky’s The Gambler
and saying to himself, “at the present moment I must repair to
the roulette-table,” than listening to George Bush deluding himself
about the fact that “while there is some uncertainty, the financial
markets are strong and solid.” The truth is, our global markets
have become a “lame duck” and all we can do is wait for
the next disaster to shake the corrupt foundation on which things have
been run

The Fed’s emergency action
gave more the impression of a panicked attempt to stave off catastrophe,
confirming the growing conviction that the US economy is sliding into
recession, regardless of attempts at either monetary or fiscal stimulus

Get ready for some hard economic
times. The next step will be soaring inflation, as strapped companies
in China, India and elsewere start raising their prices for goods shipped
to the US and paid for in dollars. Then the Fed will have to respond
by raising interest rates again, in an effort to shore up the currency.
And with that will come deeper recession and an even lower stock market

The rebate will help Americans
reduce their credit card debt. However, adding $150 billion to an existing
federal budget deficit that will be worsened by recession could further
alarm America's foreign creditors, traders in currency markets, and
OPEC oil producers. If the rebate loses its punch to consumer debt reduction,
imports, and pressure on the dollar, what will the government do next?

If you dig a little deeper, it
is easy to see that the U.S. never really got out of the recession of
2000-2002 which followed the bursting of the dot.com bubble at the end
of the Bill Clinton presidency. This event was marked by the stock market
crash starting in December 2000 that cost Americans over a trillion
dollars in retirement savings and other forms of paper “wealth” over a period of a few months

Let me make this simple and practical
suggestion to the President and Congress: Cut out the middleman and
mail the 145 billion dollars directly to China. That's where it is going
to end up anyway. The America people will thank you for not filling
their homes and garages with more junk. And...this is important...you
can all take pride in boasting to the people that you kept the government
out of it

Stock prices plummeted worldwide
Monday and Tuesday , amid heightened fears of a US recession. While
over the course of last week US financial markets suffered the worst
fall since 2002, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropping by 5
percent, many Asian and European indices dropped by a similar amount
in just one day

The growth-based US economy is
contracting. Media economists are alarmed, even panicky. They describe
this as a “recession” and wring their hands with woe. They
should have expected this downturn and we should accept it. Lets see
what will happen. Maybe the Earth will benefit from the declining US
economy? Perhaps its pollution and other threats to the global climate
and environment will lessen?

There was a distinct note of panic
in the sudden issuance of a statement, only hours after Bush’s
return to the US from a weeklong trip through the Middle East. Bush
could give few details of the stimulus package, since they have not
been worked out, but instead outlined what he called the broad “principles”:
the package should be limited to 1 percent of GDP, or about $140 billion;
and it should consist of tax cuts only, with no increase in social spending

Retail sales plummet; gas and electricity
prices soar, further eating into already squeezed disposable incomes;
Citigroup and Merrill Lynch, two of the great symbols of American capitalism,
forced to hand round the begging bowl among Asian and Middle Eastern
sovereign wealth funds after massive write-downs on US sub-prime mortgage
lending

With major Wall Street finance
houses posting tens of billions of dollars in new losses, housing starts
declining 30 percent compared to last year, retail sales plunging and
unemployment climbing to 5 percent—a two year high—the Bush
White House, the Democratic congressional leadership and the Federal
Reserve Board chairman all signaled Thursday their support for the passage
of an economic stimulation package

Two more major banks reported heavy
mortgage and consumer-loan losses Monday for the fourth quarter of 2007,
reinforcing fears that that US financial crisis will likely trigger
a recession, not only in America, but worldwide

US Federal Reserve Board Chairman
Ben Bernanke warned Wednesday that the US economy is slowing dramatically
and broadly hinted that the Fed would aggressively cut interest rates
in response, perhaps before its next scheduled policy meeting at the
end of January

When banks don’t lend and
consumers don’t borrow; the economy crashes. End of story. The
whole system is predicated on the prudent use of credit. That system
is now in terminal distress. Everyone to the bunkers. Perhaps the whole
“inflation-deflation” debate is academic. The real issue
is the length and severity of the impending recession. That’s
what we really want to know. And how many people will needlessly suffer